 Have you ever looked at a video of your squats and thought who the hell is that and why is he leaning over while he squats? So I've had experience with this and I know a number of people who have had experience with this but they'll watch their squat from behind and they'll say oh my god that bar is so shifted it might look like this or maybe not quite that bad but maybe something like this and what they try to do then is they try to lift the tilted downside okay so if you have this barbell is twisting idea generally you can't feel it unless you are looking at it you can't we're very biased in ourselves and we are overconfident in our abilities and this is one example of that so a lot of times I'll give someone a cue and I'll say I want you to come over this way and I'll say okay a little bit more okay a little bit more and then they'll say oh my god you want me all the way over there and I'm like yeah but all I'm doing is just putting you back to center and they're like what that's unreal I've had no idea I was so off-kilter there so it's the same kind of idea and maybe more so even with the barbell squat where the bar is bending so what I want to talk about is why is the barbell bending the the spine is the biggest thing for us to look at so I don't know if you know animal anatomy very well but salamanders tend to crawl like this where they side bend on each step and our spines do the same thing what happens when we take steps is some form of that right and now I'm exaggerating it so you can see it but it's the same principle our our spines and our hips can work in that way so one hip will hike up that spine will bend that way and the shoulder on that side will drop and it looks kind of like a bar tilting while you're squatting so I would caution the person who's trying to fix this by lifting the downside I would say instead you should look at the hips because that's closer to the ground that's closer to where you're producing the actual forces right so everything comes from the lower body the interaction with the ground is what moves the bar so we should start there we should and in anecdotally when we do start there we generally see better things and outside of that if I'm tilting and I just lift at the lower side that's just shrugging on that side and that's just gonna shut off my hamstring my glutes my quads on that side so I don't want any of that now okay so look at the hips first if I am shifted this way and I see my squat like this generally you're gonna see a side-to-side transfer a little bit in in you know a concomitant with the barbell bending or tilting so look at the hips address the hips first if you notice the right hip is too high and maybe you know some anatomy you can think okay what is too short let's make it longer but generally you can just look at it and say okay that's too short let's do this instead so if I notice someone with a right hip that's too high I'm thinking okay they got too much abs here they got too many inner costals here that right shoulder has dropped down we need to open up that right side we need to drop the right hip and open the right lateral chest well side chest armpit area I need you to show me your armpit a little bit more when you flex right so that's that's sometimes a good cue depending on what exercise you're doing and most importantly if I think about doing this here's your general rule if I'm doing a hip shift and my right hip comes up higher my left hip comes down lower which glute is off which glute is longer is maybe a better question shorter glute is the left one so this tilting shuts off my right one so any exercise that helps you find that right glute that helps you keep that and potentially keep that in some sort of squatting pattern can be therapeutic so make sure you're finding and feeling a right glute I like to start people if they're really shifted some of the best exercises are single leg stuff so a split squat is the best one to start with hold a really lightweight in front of your body if you're if you're pretty strong otherwise just go body weight maybe even support yourself on a chair in front of you and you're just gonna come down okay and you're generally gonna want to do the same thing but when you're on one leg it's much easier to cue so we're gonna say okay let's hike the left hip up and we're gonna hang on to that this whole time and then you might watch some of my other videos you might see oh my god my foot it's rolling out let's keep that foot flat let's keep that down that's your basic rule keep the foot flat keep the hips level and then just try to run through that motion then you could do that for a couple of weeks or you could even do that right away and go squat again because the goal here is to improve the squat so we want to use that as our major measure if you're feeling a glute that's a good thing if you don't feel so tight over on that side that's higher that's also a good thing so hi I'm sure you're gathering by now a tilting bar is usually not a quick fix and it's pretty complicated so look at the hips find out what glute is off find out what inner thigh is off hint it's the opposite of the glute if my right hip is higher my left adductor is off and if my left hip is higher my right adductor is more off and lastly I would caution you I'm trying to simplify this for you in this hip-hike thing but that's not the whole story because there's also twisting that's going on when we side bend just like our salamander crawls we also turn our body so this turns my spine the side bending turns my spine this way okay it doesn't turn all my spine this way but it turns this part of my spine this way so you need to be aware of that you might not only have a tilt but you might also have a turn and you're gonna have to keep that in mind so if I have this right hip-hike make sure I'm looking for this glute here make sure I'm looking for this inner thigh here and make sure I can maintain some sort of lower outside abs because those are our general cue to say okay I have control of my hips I'm optimizing my hip mobility now I know that I'm squatting in a good position so turn on the glute look at the hips and use those lower outer oblique abdominals to help guide you good luck